OM/LSU Rivalry Bedtime Stories- Part 9

Part 9:
I have in my home quite a collection of Ole Miss memorabilia. One of my
treasured items is an Oct 12, 1962 coply of Time Magazine- probably the #1
magazine of it's day. A major article in that magazine described the nightmarish
war between 2,000 Federal Marshalls and over 2,000 students, local law
enforcement agents and mostly outside "rednecks" with their deer rifles over the
enrollment of the 1st black man into a university in Miss. Ole Miss had become
not just national news, it was international news headlines all over the world.
The campus was a bloody battle field and every hour more rednecks poured onto
campus increasing the tension. We took the bullet for the sins of not just the
South but an entire nation where racism still flourished.
Finally order was restored but not until the U.S. Army occupied the campus with
20,000 troops and established Marshall Law. Without getting into more detail
than many would endure on a sports message board, Ole Miss was all to rn up and
almost shut down completely. The only thing that was left for the students to
look forward to was Vaught's football season.
Vaught would look back on his '62 team as his favorite all time. It wasn't his
most talented but he thought it was maybe his best. With all the distractions on
campus every day, he kept the football players focused. He not only had to keep
his team focused but had to convince several other teams even to play us. They
wouldn't at our stadium. But Vaught did a masterful job of working it all out.
Vaught and many others believed that successful college football saved Ole Miss
from closing it's doors that year. And the great rivalry with LSU did more than
it's part to help.
Vaught noted in his book that the Pep Rally before the LSU game in front of the
Student Union was wild and loud as usual and was the healthiest the students had
looked since before the whol e ugly incident. But as the students did their
traditional charge up the hill to Miller Dorm where the football players lived,
the nervous Army troops that surrounded the mob almost fired tear gas into the
crowd thinking that things were out of control. They hadn't seen anything like
that since the early days when riots were still taking place. But they didn't
and were finally persuaded it wasn't about Meredith, it was all about LSU.
Vaught would carry his usual undefeated bunch of Rebs down to Baton Rouge again
that year. But he wasn't just fighting all the distractions on the Ole Miss
campus, he was also fighting the fact that although he had produced the best
football program in America over the past 4 years, he hadn't beaten LSU in the
regular season in 5 years. Halloween, 1962 was a few days off and he hadn't
beaten the Tigers and Dietzel since Halloween night 1957.
LSU brought yet another tremendously talented group of w arriors to meet another
top Ole Miss team in what was shaping up to be game that might very well
determine who would be the '62 NC's. LSU's defense rivalled our '59 defense in
'62. It would allow only 34 points to be scored on LSU all year. Ole Miss,
behind a sterling passing clinic put on by Glynn Griffing would score 15 of
those 34 that night. Jimmy Weatherly would also play a great game that night as
he proved to be a powerful runner as well as capable passer against maybe the
nation's best defense.
And our defense was also NC quality only giving up 53 points total all year.
LSU, behind AA Jerry Stovall [who was runnerup in the Heisman Trophy voting that
year] could manage only 7 points against the Rebs that night and we had finally
won 15-7.
Ole Miss would go on to it's 1st perfect season 10-0 and as usual, the Northern
controlled AP and UPI had the deck staked against us and we ended the year #3 in
both polls. Tha nkfully, a number of national rankin g services named us #1 after
the bowl games.
If you detect a note of bitterness in my ink, you're damn right. I believe the
argument against me would be that USC completed a perfect season too and
deserved to be #1. I'll tell you without blinking an eye that if Ohio State,
Mich, Syracuse or any other powerhouse from the north had gone undefeated in
'62, at least one of the major polls would have named them NC's. We had no
chance from the start, especially after all the bad publicity that year.
It was the same song in 1959. Virtually every sports expert knew we had the beat
college football team in America but didn't have to vote for us having the 7-3
loss to the 2nd best team over an undefeated Syracuse team. Notre Dame and the
other national powerhouse programs had been voted #1 with 1 loss many times in
college football history over undefeated teams.
And if you're still not convin ced, in 1960, Minnesota had been soun dly beaten by
a less than mediocre Purdue bunch to give them 1 loss during the regular season.
We tie one of the great elite programs, LSU for our 1 blemish that year during
the regular season and both the AP and UPI voters named the Golden Gophers their
NC's. Those polls were absolutely stacked against Southern teams. And to add
insult to injury, a few national ranking services who announced their NC's after
the bowl games still named Minnesota their #1 team even after USC beat the stew
out of them in the Rose Bowl. Thank goodness that The Football Writers Assoc. of
America selected us and we received Look Magazine's Grantland Rice Trophy [the
1st time it had been awarded to a Southern team].
I told my LSU friends after the 2003 regular season that had it not been for the
BCS poll, they would never have had the opportunity to play in the Sugar Bowl
for a NC. I firmly believe that the old coac hes poll [UPI] and the writer's poll < BR>[AP] would both have selected USC. Rant over.
On to the '63 game which will be my last in depth Bedtime Story.